Saturday, February 22, 2014

Carpe Diem

I have to capture today, while it's still fresh in my mind - a perfect little piece of our clear, sunny February.

Little Red Poncho Hood. :)

I've suspected for awhile that Addie is an outdoorsy sort of baby.  When she was four or five months old, I could take her out into the yard with me while I hung laundry and I found her surprisingly content to pick at (and taste) the blades of grass and fallen leaves.

When we got here, the thorns were one of our first discoveries.  Naturally, I was hesitant to let our barely-crawling girl venture out of doors into the minefield of prickly things that was our new back yard.  Today was pleasant, though, far too much so to stay inside.  I had a two-year-old neighbor visiting, my own wiggly daughter, and a box of big, round sidewalk chalk, as well as an empty driveway.

At first, Addie showed an interest in coloring the concrete, but soon found her true passion alongside the pavement: dirt, and little rocks.  I let her venture, often warning her to "spit it out," when she grew too interested in tasting the new-found wonderland.  For the most part, though, she behaved herself, screaming now and then to hear her voice echo off the mesa.


A couple hours later, Ben and I took her for a walk around the school track.  We stopped often to allow her to explore the football field and the track perimeter.


It's all fun and games...until Mom won't let you play
with the camera.
  Eventually, she found just what she had been looking for: a sandy shoulder, smoothed by the wind and just waiting for her.  We placed her on the ground and watched her scoot-crawl a few feet onto the sand.  She plopped herself down on her bottom, found some sticks for poking, and didn't move or pay us any attention for the rest of the outing.



Ben and I watched and did our best to document the event, finding that not even the ever-coveted camera could tear her interest from the dirt.  I was surprised and delighted, and I'm pretty sure Ben was too.  By the time we took her home, her left knee was, of course, tanned with dust from the crawling.  Bits of grass stuck out of her socks and she was less than happy to be leaving the fun behind.

There was just time for a quick (and much-needed) bath before nap time.  Part of me was discouraged with my Saturday and the amount of work I planned to and did not do, but at least the time felt well spent.  In the midst of my bad attitude about the lack of cold or snow, I remember just a little what it was like to be a child at the onset of Spring.  I certainly wouldn't mind having more days like this one, even if my house is still messy.

As I write this, thoughts of the coming summer, and of the energetic girl who will need exercise and entertainment, are also floating about in my head.  I think it's decided - we need a sandbox.


Friday, February 21, 2014

My Resolution

Should I even bother apologizing for the appalling amount of time that has past since last I posted?  Because, yes.  It's been a ridiculously long time.  In my defense, the last few weeks have kind of swept me off my feet, and I've hardly had a moment to sit down, much less stare at a computer screen.

Well, last month I put off the task of coming up with resolutions for the new year, but admittedly, there was one that popped into my head rather easily.  My goal for 2014 is (phase 1) to gain 35 pounds (give or take) and then (phase 2) to have lost a few of those again by the end of the year.  Phase 2 will begin sometime around the beginning of September.

:)

Monday, February 10, 2014

Daily Danger

I'm coming to a realization about myself: I am in constant peril.

Each day, I watch my daughter, ever more adept, navigate her way about the house.  Constantly, I am steering her away from power outlets, thorns on the rug, heavy things that could fall on her, glass things that could cut her, and a dozen other dangers.  She is never truly aware of any of them, never realizes how often and in how many ways she might have hurt herself.  In an eternal sense, I think I'm very much the same way.

I believe in a straight and narrow path which we are meant to follow.  I believe that I have unfathomable potential, which I, by myself, cannot hope to harness.  I believe that my Heavenly Father has a plan for my life.  It is attainable only via that straight and narrow path, and is the only way to access and enjoy the divine potential that is within me.  But when it comes to following that path, I'm something of a spiritual infant.  Maybe a toddler, on my better days.  I wander often into danger.

Sometimes, I only recognize my detour when my feet are safely back on the right road.  More often, I realize that I'm not headed in quite the right direction while I'm turned away, and somehow, I always end up back where I should be, even if for so short a time that I've really only crossed over the path again.  But I seldom seem to recognize my little errors for what they are - seeds of danger, potent and ever ready to germinate.

During this past month, which was a difficult one for me, I recognized rather apathetically that my course had deviated by a degree or two, and that I was beginning to shoot off at a tangent from where I knew I should be.  It was a deeper rut than I tend to find myself in on a regular basis.  I don't want to be overly personal, and I don't want this post to sound like a confession.  It isn't.  It is, in a sense, what has been going on in my life for the past few weeks, and it's a new angle at a reality I've long known.  Furthermore, I don't doubt that, in some degree or another, it's something that we all experience - the stumbling, re-righting, and stumbling rhythm of life.

I've turned from some deviations, in the past, by seeing an example and gaining strength from someone I admire.  Other times, I've seen or recalled people whom I don't wish to emulate, and recognized that I may be following the same crooked course.  I've been teased, goaded, enticed and loved out of danger.  But this time?  This time, I was called back by a sense of duty.  Some days (or weeks or months) are difficult, but this, I realized, is only the beginning of the decades-long, even lifelong adventure that is motherhood.  Addie and the siblings that follow her, will be watching me.  I cannot be less than my best self for them.

Furthermore, there is the path itself, the potential and happiness it promises, the God who calls me back to it, and the Savior who facilitates my return, through terrain that I cannot navigate.  I have a purpose to fulfill.  I have made promises that I will not break.  I have so very, very much to gain, and I have been fighting for it since before the beginning of the world.

So once again, I feel like I'm headed gradually away from danger, and once again, I'm only just beginning to sense how far from happiness I might have landed, if left long on that course.  But the relief has been quick in coming and the words are back.  The words that I tried and failed, so many times in the past weeks to write, are so much more ready in my mind this afternoon.  The words, which, when formed under my fingers, cast a glow of contentment over my day, are once again making this house a home, in my eyes.  The words are a gift from God.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Happier Post

So much for the happier post I promised yesterday, but to make up for it, today will be the happy-post-day.  With pictures.  And I'm eating a pickle, so everything is pretty much OK in the world. :)

This girl is a year old and already I can hardly keep up with her.  That is in spite of her stubborn belief that it is way better to be carried than to try to do that whole walking thing on her own.  One of her favorite things to do is riding in her 'wagon,' to help mom tidy up.


Standing is no big deal, though.


She talks all the time and enjoys it when her dad and I talk back, although most of the words don't come out in English.  We've tried to teach her sign language, mostly hoping that she could tell us when her diaper needs changing, but the only sign she's really picked up is 'more,' which, to her, means 'food.'  That is a sign we have been seeing plenty of, especially in these last few weeks.


I can only assume that we're on the cusp of a growth spurt.  Every time I sat down to eat breakfast this morning, she was there, signing 'more' and waiting to be fed.  Thank goodness she won't touch pickles. :)


As always, Daddy's glasses are the thing to have, and the newest thing to do with them?  Get Mom to put them on or to put them on Addie.


She's out to prove that ballerinas, though cute, are not as innocent as they may appear.  Just after I took this picture, I found her against the opposite wall, muscling her way through the barrier of suitcases we had put up to barricade to computer desk.


And, at long last, she has almost enough hair for me to play with, though the cooperation is usually still lacking, at best.  

Monday, February 3, 2014

Tale of Woe

Once upon a Saturday, we set off on an adventure.  I had recently discovered a library in a town an hour away (everything is an hour away from here.  It's weird, like we've got a one-hour radius in every direction and then - *poof!* - civilization!) that serves everyone on the reservation.  Yes, that includes me!  In exchange for a short application, proof of ID, and proof of residence, I could have access to a library at least three or four or five times the size of the one that sits just below to mesa here.  I guess that's still relatively small, but can you see how excited I was?  And with good reason, too.

Well, we packed ourselves into the car and rode off.  Ben read to me as I drove and all the while, I daydreamed of all those books, packed neatly onto row after row of shelves.  Fiction, non-fiction, picture books, children's literature, and of course the Native American Collection.  I felt that I was about to be admitted into a new and yet familiar world that was not confined to my little neighborhood on the mesa, to a big, blue sky speckled with crows, or to my daily routine of home-post office-library-home.  Oh, can you imagine how lovely that thought was?  Lovely.  Very.

As we drove into town, turned right and then left, parked, and approached the door, beyond which waited the museum and library, I was all anticipation.  With Ben along to watch Addie, I would be free to browse contentedly, without worrying about the little hands that are always so eager to remove books by the handful.  The door was unlocked.  We had done our best to find out the library hours.  They weren't posted anywhere obvious online, but Ben had found a slightly aged page on the website that reasonably reassured us that we would find the place open.

To the left, the museum had little traffic.  We headed to the right, to the glass doors that stood between us and the books.  They were closed.  The space beyond them was dark.  The hours were posted on the door - open Monday through Friday.  Closed Saturdays.

I know I'm being a little melodramatic here, but...closed Saturdays?  What else are Saturdays for, but to go to the library?  To sit on the floor among the shelves and browse among the books?  To take in the delicious scent of delicious words?  (Yes, I've always had a thing for smelling books.  Something about the inky, papery smell of the pages and the binding...  Anyway, so now you know.)

And there you have my tale of woe, and a little bit of what's been going on in my life.  Don't worry, though.  It's not all bad.  I'll try to post something more positive tomorrow.